Restraining The Inner Man

[I]n Otero County, New Mexico, County Commissioner, Couy Griffin—recently sentenced to 14 days in jail for participating in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol—refused a state Supreme Court order to certify his state’s June 7 primary results. Reached by phone Griffin told reporters: “My vote to remain a no isn’t based on any evidence, it’s not based on any facts, it’s only based on my gut feeling and my own intuition, and that’s all I need.”

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/06/trump-plan-jan-six-lady-ruby-freeman.html

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Going back to the 1950s and 60s and the struggle for civil rights and against segregation, I recall a great deal of noise was produced about “hearts and minds.” There were those, for example, who suggested that black people should not push too hard for equal rights but should bide their time until the Earth spins around a few times and segregationists will have changed their hearts and minds; then all will be well. These people did not reckon with the likes of Alabama governor George Wallace, who proclaimed in 1963:

“I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

Somehow the idea that the exercise of their fundamental rights by American citizens depended upon the innards of their fellow countrymen always struck me as more than faintly absurd.

“Yes, sir, you may vote, but only when my spleen, kidney, and bladder say you may.”

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“If I get ‘em by the short and curlies, the hearts and minds will follow.”

Lyndon Johnson*

“The short and curlies” is the law. While legislation may or may not change hearts and minds, it changes people’s actions. They want to stay on the side of the law. I may in my heart and mind believe that it’s my God-given right to drive 100 miles an hour on the NJ Turnpike; however, I recognize that if I do so, I will have a super trooper on my tail very soon, and there will be consequences due to my breaking the speeding law. 

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Linda C. McClain: 

New Jersey Senator Harrison A. Williams, Jr. stated: As Martin Luther King said: “Morality cannot be legislated; but behavior can be regulated. The law may not change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless.” We have seen this in so many areas where we know we can’t change the heart of man, the mind of man, but we can regulate his behavior.**

Whether or not positive legislation changes people’s innards, the important thing is that it forces change in their external actions. Whitey in Mississippi may not have liked having a black man sitting at the next restaurant table, but if he wanted to eat, he had to swallow his prejudice.

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*I always thought it was Richard Nixon who said it.

**THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964 AND “LEGISLATING MORALITY”: ON CONSCIENCE, PREJUDICE, AND WHETHER “STATEWAYS” CAN CHANGE “FOLKWAYS,” LINDA C. MCCLAIN

https://www.bu.edu/bulawreview/files/2015/05/MCCLAIN.pdf